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Taking on his next challenge

A broken leg suffered in the May 4 home opener is the latest obstacle to overcome for first-year Rochester Rhinos forward Matt Luzunaris, who lost his brother to cancer 12 years ago and his fiancee last August.

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Taking on his next challenge

ROC
Published 11:32 a.m. ET May 20, 2013

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Rochester Rhinos vs Harrisburg City Islanders: Rhino Matt Luzunaris calls for help as soon as he feels injured (possible broken leg) in the first half at Sahlen's Stadium in Rochester, N.Y. on Saturday, May 4 2013.(Photo: CARLOS ORTIZ, staff photographer)Buy Photo

Matt Luzunaris broke his leg in May 4 home opener. Video by Jeff DiVeronica.

No one would blame Matt Luzunaris if he said, "Why me?"

"With all the stuff I've been through, I felt like I'd done my time, I've paid my dues," the Rochester Rhinos forward says.

But his inner strength is being tested — again.

A 24-year-old who grew up in Boca Raton, Fla., Luzunaris lost his brother, Sean, to a rare form of cancer in 2001. It was two days before 9/11 when his family said goodbye to Sean, who was 16. Luzunaris never really got to say goodbye to his fiancee, Austen Everett. She died last Aug. 14 from complications following a heart attack. Everett was 25. A former Division I college goalkeeper at UC-Santa Barbara and Miami, she'd battled non-Hodgkins lymphoma since 2008.

Luzunaris came to Rochester for a fresh start with the Rhinos, who host his former team, USL PRO league leader Orlando City, on Saturday night. Instead, he has been hit with another setback. Luzunaris broke the tibia and fibula in his right leg in the May 4 season opener. There's a chance he could return if Rochester makes a playoff run.

It was a gruesome injury. When Luzunaris reached for his leg, it was at a 90-degree angle. He thinks tight compression socks may have kept him from suffering a compound fracture similar to the injury sustained by Louisville basketball player Kevin Ware in March. Ware was one of the images in his head as he lay on the turf at Sahlen's Stadium for about 10 minutes. Luzunaris raised his hand while being carted off the field, then covered his face with his hands.

"It's frustrating. I can't do anything," Luzunaris says, sitting in his apartment in Chili with a clunky cast up to the middle of his thigh on his leg. "But I guess it's just another challenge and another thing to prove myself."

Luzunaris says he was brought up by his mother, Lisa, and stepfather, Ron Kasiman to "stop and assess situations" to make good decisions. Before his junior year of high school, he left home for the Darlington School, a soccer academy in Rome, Ga. By then, Luzunaris had enough talent to turn the heads of coaches and had decided he wanted to make soccer his future.

He also had grown up more than your average 16-year-old. Losing a sibling will do that, Luzunaris says. But much of the three years Sean underwent treatment for Desmoplastic Small Round Cell Tumor, from good days to his brother's bed-ridden bad ones, is "a blur." DSRCT usually strikes boys or young males as masses around the abdomen.

"(Being so young) you don't really know what to do or how to accept things," Luzunaris says.

Luzunaris played one semester at Central Florida before his connections led to a tryout with a team in Austria. When he signed his first pro contract in February of 2008 with SC Schwanenstadt, Luzunaris was a month shy of his 19th birthday.

He spent a little more than two years in Europe — Luzunaris speaks fluent German — and that included a two-month stint, although he didn't play, with Brazilian giant Botafogo on loan. But everything began to change shortly after he read a story online about Everett, who with her cancer in remission in 2009 was returning to action with Miami and starting a foundation to help children with cancer.

Because of his brother's battle, Luzunaris felt a connection to Everett. He tracked down her e-mail address, wrote her and the first night they talked on the phone for two hours. They used technology — Skype and Blackberry Messenger — for months without meeting in person.

During the annual two-month break in the European playing calendar that fall, Luzunaris came home and his first stop was to meet Everett. Thanksgiving in Florida. Christmas in her hometown of Seattle. They were in love. He went back to Austria, but Luzunaris says something happened to him in early 2010 that he has been hesitant to share.

He'd come home from practice tired, so he took a nap. "I woke up in a deep sweat, huffing and puffing — almost like an anxiety attack," Luzunaris recalls. What woke him was his brother's voice "telling me I needed to go home because (Everett) was going to get sick again."

Within a couple weeks, he packed his stuff and moved in with her in Miami. Suddenly, soccer didn't matter as much. "She was just a beautiful soul," Luzunaris recalls. "She made every single person that she (met) feel special in their own certain way."

And just as his brother's voice advised, later in 2010 cancer came back. Everett went home to Seattle for treatment and Luzunaris went there for support. A tryout with Major League's Soccer's San Jose franchise, located about a 90-minute flight from Seattle, landed Luzunaris in America's top league in 2011. But he was stuck behind forward Steven Lenhart and Chris Wondolowski (34 goals in 2010-11) and played in only six matches.

"I was appreciative of the chance," Luzunaris says.

As Everett tried to get her lymphoma into remission, Luzunaris asked her to marry him on Oct. 28, 2011. They were in Santa Barbara, Calif. The memory still makes him smile. "She was an amazing person," he says.

After being loaned briefly to Orlando City in 2011 — in his only match he scored the tying goal in a 2-1 win against the Rhinos — he spent the 2012 season with the club. Everett tried spending time in Florida, but cancer wasn't going away this time. He was in Harrisburg, Pa., for a match and she was in Denver for treatment with her mother when Everett suffered a heart attack on Aug. 1.

In her last text message to him that night, she said she wasn't feeling well and was going to rest. "We'd talk later that night or tomorrow," Luzunaris recalls the text saying.

It never happened. Although she was breathing on her own for the next 13 days, Everett never regained consciousness. Luzunaris and his mother were there with Everett's family. "There were times when I felt she was a little aware of what was going on, but who knows," he says.

Her memory lives on in the Austen Everett Foundation. Luzunaris is the president and Everett's mother, June Leahy, is vice president. It's mission: "To inspire, empower, and improve the lives of children faced with cancer by matching and integrating these special individuals with professional and intercollegiate athletic organizations."

That will keep Luzunaris busy while he's recovering. "Matt's a driven guy," says Rhinos coach Jesse Myers. "I think he'll come back and be the Matt Luzunaris of old."

While at Strong Memorial Hospital after his May 5 surgery, he befriended a 17-year-old paraplegic. They plan to stay in touch. "When you look at someone going through what Matt is," Lisa Kasiman says about her son, "and they go and make another kid smile, to me, that says a lot."

What does Luzunaris think Everett would tell him about his latest challenge? "It'll only make me stronger," he says.